DETROIT – Call it shooting yourself in the foot, call it gift-wrapping goals.

Whatever the expression, Detroit Red Wings coach Mike Babcock expressed his displeasure with mistakes that are leading to easy goals for the opposition.

Whether it's a neutral-zone turnover, a player in the wrong spot or a bad change, poor decisions have cost the Red Wings points that were up for grabs in the past two games (4-3 overtime loss to St. Louis Wednesday and 5-2 loss to Anaheim Friday).

They don't have the depth or firepower, like they did in the past, to overcome these miscues.

“Two freebies,'' Babcock said. “Kuba (Jakub Kindl) is not in the right spot, should be over here helping out. (Niklas) Kronwall's pass to Fil (Valtteri Filppula) is off his stick, Kuba's not back defensively to look after it.

“Whitey's (Ian White) got it along the wall on a line change, just gives it away, two-on-one. That's the game.

“So, we do everything for 40 minutes to be set up to win and two plays with the puck … We're not the type of team, with what we have, that we're going to recover from turning the puck over. People can say you're bad defensively, well, we weren't bad defensively, there's no defense for turnovers. It's puck plays that give it to us two nights in a row.

“We can't do it and we got to look after it quick because we need points.''

The Red Wings (7-5-2) will try to stop the slide Sunday at Minnesota (6-6-2).

Rookie goaltender Petr Mrazek will make his second start, trying to follow up on an impressive 5-1 victory at St. Louis Feb. 7.

Personnel aside, the Red Wings need to reduce mistakes.

“I think we just got to take care of the puck,'' captain Henrik Zetterberg said. “It's not the structure or how we're playing that's killing us, it's the turnovers and executing on passes and stuff like that.

“Last game we played real well, did a lot of good things, and all the sudden two shifts in the third, plays that shouldn't happen, and it's in our net. Especially now, when we don't have the lineup we used to have, we have to make sure we're doing all the little things right.''

Zetterberg said his team is having to work much harder for its goals than the opposition.

“Some of that happens over the course of a season,'' Zetterberg said. “You won't have the bounces with you every time. In the same way, you kind of deserve your own bounces. If you keep doing mistakes and bad decisions, it will end up in your net. But, if you do the right things, eventually you get reward for it.''

Datsyuk, who said his shoulder feels much better, agreed.

“We too much give it gift (goals),'' Datsyuk said. “And power play. We need to score power play. When we score on power play it's much easier game.''

Asked if they need to shoot more on the power play, Datsyuk said, “It's not only shooting, but lots of things we need to do better. All details.